A tanker truck carrying tar slammed into a highway toll booth that had been seized by protesting teachers Thursday, killing seven people and injuring 14, authorities in the western state of Michoacan said.

Long before he became known worldwide as the NSA contractor who exposed top-secret U.S. government surveillance programs, Edward Snowden worked for a Japanese anime company run by friends and went by the nicknames “The True HOOHA” and “Phish.”

The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) said on Wednesday that extensive U.S. surveillance efforts had helped stop “dozens” of possible attacks, and warned that making details of the top-secret programs public had compromised national security.

A video game with a protagonist who controls the world around him by hacking into systems is generating growing buzz, for its eerie parallels with the current storm about U.S. surveillance.

U.S. prosecutors announced fraud and other charges Wednesday against eight alleged members of an international cybercrime ring that the government said hacked into the computers of more than a dozen leading financial institutions and the U.S. military's payroll service.

Texas executed a confessed murderer of five people Wednesday, its 499th inmate to be put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States nearly four decades ago.

NASCAR driver Jason Leffler died from injuries suffered when his car slammed into the wall of a dirt raceway in New Jersey, state police said.

CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who defended harsh interrogation techniques and was involved with the fallout after the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, announced his retirement Wednesday.

A fierce, wind-whipped wildfire destroyed more than 90 homes and menaced additional communities in and around Colorado's second-largest city on Wednesday, forcing thousands of residents to flee.

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to begin consideration of a White House-backed bill to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, burying a procedural roadblock that opponents regularly use to delay or kill legislation.